Budget Spreading, Repeating, and Percentage-Increase Processes

The budget spreading and repeating processes provide an alternative to the often time-consuming job of specifying budget amounts on an amount-by-amount, period-by-period basis. You can enter a lump sum budget amount or a percentage of an existing amount for a ChartField combination.

General Ledger can automatically spread an amount or apply a percentage across the periods in a fiscal year. The amounts can be:

• Added by period.

• Repeated by period.

• Spread evenly across the periods.

  You can also use percentage changes by period.

Spreading or repeating a fixed amount or percentage over a range of periods reduces data entry. Here is an example:

Suppose that you send a memo to the manager of the account management department indicating that the monthly office party expense for January through June will be 1,200.00 USD. The manager repeats the 1,200.00 USD amount for each month during that period.

When you review the sales department's budget, however, you realize that you have made a mistake, and you send another memo clarifying that 1,200.00 USD is the entire amount for the half-year period, and it must be divided evenly among the six months. The manager decides to spread a negative 6,000.00 USD evenly across the January through June time period. This leaves 200.00 USD in each monthly period and corrects the error.

Now suppose that after you consider the number of new employees, you decide to add 200.00 USD to each monthly period for a total expense of 2,400.00 USD. However, before the budget is finalized, you receive a memo from the budget committee directing you to reduce all nonessential sales and all general and administrative expenses by 50 percent. After you reduce the selected monthly expenses by the required 50 percent, you have 1200.00 USD for the final office party budget for the six months period.

This table shows the transactions:

	JAN	FEB	MAR	APR	MAY	JUN
Repeat 1200,00 USD	1200	1200	1200	1200	1200	1200
Spread evenly 6000.00 USD	-1000	-1000	-1000	-1000	-1000	-1000
Balance	200	200	200	200	200	200
Add by period 200.00 USD	+200	+200	+200	+200	+200	+200
Balance	400	400	400	400	400	400
Percentage change by period	-50%	-50%	-50%	-50%	-50%	-50%
Balance	200	200	200	200	200	200

Remember the following points when you spread amounts:

• You cannot spread amounts to closed periods.

• You cannot spread amounts to balanced ledgers or to summary ledgers.

• You can spread positive or negative amounts.